October 2, 2014

Swiss researchers have created a method of producing hydrogen fuel from sunlight and water at 12.3 percent conversion efficiency, a record using earth-­abundant materials instead of expensive rare metals.

The EPFL researchers used a pair of solar cells made with a mineral called perovskite and low-cost electrodes to create an electrolyzer that separates the water molecules.

The high efficiency is based on a characteristic of perovskite cells: their… read more

October 2, 2014

University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) researchers have discovered a way to create a chemical sensor that could increase sensitivity to absorbed gas molecules by 300 times, based on imperfections in graphene sheets.

The stored oxygen can be easily released again whenever and wherever needed

October 1, 2014

A new crystalline material absorbs 160 times more oxygen than in the air around you — only a spoonful bucket-full (10 liters) of it is enough to suck up all the oxygen in a room, according to its developer, Professor Christine McKenzie in the Department of Physics, Chemistry and Pharmacy at the University of Southern Denmark.

A few grains of this material might absorb enough oxygen from the… read more

New system aims to harness the full useful portion of the solar spectrum, no solar trackers required

October 1, 2014

MIT researchers say they have developed a material that comes very close to the “ideal” for converting solar energy to heat (for conversion to electricity).

It should absorb virtually all wavelengths of light that reach Earth’s surface from the sun — but not much of the restthe longer-wavelength infrared portion of the solar spectrum, since that would increase the energy that is re-radiated by the material,… read more

October 1, 2014

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) a grant Tuesday to develop an electrode array system that will “enable researchers to better understand how the brain works through unprecedented resolution and scale.”

The electrode array is part of an advanced electronics system to monitor and modulate neurons, using more than 1,000 tiny electrodes embedded in different areas of the brain to record and stimulate… read more

October 1, 2014

On Sept. 23, KurzweilAI noted that scientists at the Salk Institute had discovered an on-and-off “switch” in cells that might allow for increasing telomerase, which rebuilds telomeres at the ends of chromosomes to keep cells dividing and generating.

We also noted that cancer cells hijack this process and that the scientists expect that the “off” switch might help keep telomerase activity below this threshold.

September 30, 2014

In the first case of Ebola to be diagnosed in the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed today through laboratory tests that a person who had traveled to Dallas from Liberia was hospitalized Sept. 28 for testing for Ebola at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas.

Local public health officials have begun identifying close contacts of the person for further daily monitoring for 21… read more

Perception of a face's identity predicts whether a specific neuron will fire when presented with an image of blended faces

September 30, 2014

Neurons programmed to fire at specific faces may have more affect on conscious recognition of faces than the images themselves, neuroscientists have found.

Subjects presented with a blended face, such as an amalgamation of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, had significantly more firing of such face-specific neurons when they recognized the blended or morphed face as one person or the other.

Deep-learning algorithm can weigh up a neighborhood better than humans.

September 30, 2014

An online demo puts you in the middle of a Google Street View with four directional options and challenges you to navigate to the nearest McDonald’s in the fewest possible steps.

While humans are generally better at this specific task than the algorithm, researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) found that a new algorithm consistently outperformed humans at a variation of the task in which… read more

September 30, 2014

Astronomers have detected radio waves within a giant gas cloud in interstellar space corresponding to an unusual carbon-based molecule called isopropyl cyanide, needed for life, as described in the journal Science (Sept. 26.)

Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, a group of radio telescopes known as the ALMA Observatory, researchers studied the gaseous star-forming region Sagittarius B2, located 27,000 light years away from Earth.

"Rochester Cloak" can hide objects across range of angles and wavelengths

September 30, 2014

University of Rochester scientists have developed a cloaking (as in Harry Potter) method that uses four standard lenses that keeps the object hidden as the viewer moves up to several degrees away from the optimal viewing position.

Previous cloaking devices have used “high-tech or exotic materials,” said John Howell, a professor of physics at the University of Rochester.

September 29, 2014

Now UCLA and Yonsei University researchers have taken the next step, with an inexpensive, simple new way to make transparent, flexible transistors that could help bring roll-up smartphones with see-through displays and other bendable gadgets to consumers in just a few years, as they reported… read more

September 29, 2014

Scientists from the University of Southampton plan to turn the Moon into a giant particle detector to help understand the origin of ultra-high-energy (UHE) cosmic rays — the most energetic particles in the Universe.

The origin of UHE cosmic rays is one of the great mysteries in astrophysics. Nobody knows where these extremely rare cosmic rays come from or how they get their enormous energies. Physicists detect them on… read more